1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a remote control system for remotely controlling various kinds of apparatuses.
2. Description of Related Art
When a machine tool manufacturer remotely analyzes failure of machine tools sold to customers, such a remote failure analysis system as described below is generally used. In this system, as shown in FIG. 4, machine tools 60 of customers and failure analysis apparatuses 51 installed in a service center 50 of the machine tool manufacturer are connected to each other via the Internet 70 for communication. The failure analysis apparatuses 51 of the service center 50 remotely controls the machine tools 60 when any trouble occurs in the machine tools 60 to obtain operation information or alarm information of the machine tools 60 and analyzes the failure based on such information, for example.
In such a system, when failure analysis is to be performed simultaneously with respect to the machine tools 60 of a plurality of customers, each of the failure analysis apparatuses 51 is directly connected to a respective one of the machine tools 60, and either one of the machine tool 60 and the failure analysis apparatus 51 as the server module waits for communication request from the other one as the client module.
However, when remote failure analysis is performed by connecting the machine tools 60 and the failure analysis apparatuses 51 directly to each other via the Internet 70, a global IP address for the exclusive use need be allocated to each of the machine tools 60 or each of the failure analysis apparatuses 51 for smooth connection of the communication channel. Therefore, as the number of machine tools 60 for which failure analysis is to be performed increases, the cost for obtaining and maintaining global IP addresses for the exclusive use increases, which is disadvantageous.
Since the above-described remote failure analysis of the machine tools 60 is not always performed but performed only when any trouble occurs in the machine tools 60, it is not economical for the machine tool manufacturer or the owner of the machine tools 60 to continue to bear the cost for maintaining the global IP address exclusive to each failure analysis apparatus or each machine tool.